Japan Teaching materials

When I taught English in Japan the teaching materials I was given were sometimes good, sometimes bad, and sometimes really bad. The materials made in Japan were pretty but often lacked in fun, whereas the amateur material found online was often ugly, so I decided to make my own. Here are a few teaching materials I made during that time.

Flashcards: daily routines.

Flashcards: “I can, I can’t”

Food and ordering games. The burgers and ice cream materials were laminated. Both could be assembled and they held together without requiring glue or tape. The food illustrations in the ice cream menu were taken from a free Japanese clipart website.

Texture flashcards. I made flashcards depicting food textures since I couldn’t find good illustrations online.

Halloween masks. The Japanese Yōkai folklore, spirits and demons, can draw a lot of parallels with the folklore surrounding Halloween. This makes the holiday very appealing for Japanese children.

Giving direction with maps. I made these maps/board games were made with illustrator. The illustrations in the maps are sourced from a popular free Japanese clipart website. For non commercial purposes theses images are free to use. These maps were used to practice giving directions in English.

Time vocabulary reference sheets. At the time the Japanese English textbooks didn’t have a comprehensive list of time vocabulary, so I made one with illustrator.

Guess who game. This is the last game I made when teaching English in Japan. This game was meant to practice adjectives and body parts.

Snakes and Ladder Game. This game was designed to practice “who is this” and “where is this”. The player moving their piece had to answer either the “where” or the “who” question from other students. When the player didn’t know the answer they had about 15 seconds to run to the teacher, holding the answer sheet, ask them the answer and quickly return to their group to give the answer.